FYI: Hefty makes TV dinner trays (= convenient bodybuilding meal containers!)

[Kaido]

Argh I need to come to this thread more often. Thanks for packing this thread with good info, Kaido :thumbsup:

To answer your previous question, the fish came out great in the portable heater. The heater has been great actually, I just need to use it more. I work as a field tech and am always outside so sometimes it's a little difficult to get my meals prepped ahead of time. I've had hot dog/fries a lot lately lol.

I really just need to take some time to check out meal plans and pick one I like.

That's slick, I'll have to pick one of those up sometime - having warm food on the road (that isn't fast food) would be awesome!

Yeah, the homemade TV dinner tray concept is pretty cool, my only problem is that I fight myself cooking on a regular basis a lot because it's something I have to do rather than just something I can do (like I have to cook a bunch of meals, vs. I can cook myself a nice dinner tonight, haha). Cursed psychology!

 

[Kaido]

Added an amazing new tool to my nutrition system - a giant outdoor gas griddle! 36" of cooking goodness:

http://www.blackstoneproducts.com/prodinfo/36griddle_com.html

On sale at Lowes for $299. Uses a standard propane tank. I'll post more about it in OT at some point, but here's some pics for now:

Massive quantities of food

Chicken, steak, and veggies

Prepping the trays

Ready to freeze

I'm an appliance nut - anything I can do to get more consistent results more easily is +1 in my book. For rice, I use a fuzzy logic rice cooker. It's one of the best ways to make rice I've ever used - you can do all kinds of rice perfectly (white, brown, basmati, jasmine, texmati, etc.) as well as oatmeal (including steel-cut oats). This is a newer version of what I have:

http://www.amazon.com/Tiger-JBA-A10U...dp/B004S59E28/

Pricey, but if you want restaurant-quality rice with literally zero effort (add water, add rice, press button, remove within 12 hours if you're lazy - has a warming function), it's the way to go. I also use an electric steamer (broccoli, cauliflower, peas, carrots, green beans, mixed veggies, etc.) if I'm doing a lot of frozen veggies at once:

http://www.amazon.com/Hamilton-Beach...dp/B002SB8LPA/

That way I can buy in bulk & keep everything in storage (5-gallon food-grade pails or deep freezer), cook a huge amount of food at once, and then prep my TV dinners. I also did a pretty good pumpkin chili recently, thread here:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2407662

I'll try it in the slow cooker next time so I can make a larger quantity for freezing. Got some jalapenos & ground turkey to try out this time. Also been doing a lot of meatloaf lately - working on improving my recipes for ground turkey & ground chicken meatloaves. Meatloaves & chilis actually heat up really nicely in the microwave (unlike other things, which can turn out rubbery). Here's my current meal plan: (more of a guideline)

http://catch42.pbworks.com/w/page/78929159/Meal Plan

I'm usually only doing 4 trays a day - I make my chocolate milkshake smoothie for breakfast at home (protein powder, frozen bananas, PB, honey, carob powder - this is the only thing that carob is good in lol) and I'll usually just cook up dinner with my family at home for the last meal, so I'll just grab a variety pack for the day (chili, meatloaf, egg/potato salad, chicken, whatever) to mix it up.

 

[Kaido]

I recently started getting frozen, handmade soups from a local healthy take-out shop (they use microwave/freezer-safe disposable containers) & it dawned on me that I could make my own! I'm normally not a big soup guy, but this place changed my opinion of soup because in my mind, soup was always mostly broth, like chicken noodle soup. This place has thicker soups - not stews, but just a lot of veggies, lentils, starches, etc., (kale & lentil is da bomb, one of the best soups I've ever eaten) which made me realize that soups can be a meal rather than just something you eat when you're cold or sick. Anyway, they freeze them in cups with vented lids, which I found online:

http://www.webstaurantstore.com/cho...th-vented-paper-lid-250-case/760SOUP8WPA.html

...delicious soups, stews, chili, rice, pastas and more to go!

That's a pretty dang good idea - soup, chili, etc. The paper ones above say they're not for microwave use (although they've worked fine for me), but they do sell some clear plastic ones that are microwave-safe in various sizes. Here's a 16-ounce microwave-safe container with lid:

http://www.webstaurantstore.com/16-...r-with-lid-240-case/128HRD16 COMBO240.html

$27 for 240 cups & lids, super reasonable. I just snagged a second deep freezer (small chest freezer) that I installed in my kitchen for frozen meals. Right now I'm keeping my 2-compartment meals, soups & chilis, and ziploc bags of smoothie mixes (frozen fruit, greens, etc.). I'm thinking about getting some of the bigger 3-compartment oven-safe containers for doing larger, nicer dinners when I don't feel like cooking for my family; they are "freezer to oven" safe. Downside is they're not cheap - $77 for 250 & the lids are sold separately:

http://www.webstaurantstore.com/gen...-8-1-2-x-5-7-8-x-1-1-2-250-case/37455337.html

$47 for 250 lids:

http://www.webstaurantstore.com/gen...-pan-or-55337-food-pan-250-case/37495357.html

So that's $124 total for 250 lids & oven-safe containers, which is about 50 cents per container. I could probably get away with covering them in aluminum foil to save a few bucks, but the lid is also a bubble, which gives you more vertical space to add more food (adds 19 cents per container), which is nice for a larger dinner box.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Wow thanks for all the cool info!

Now that has got me thinking wonder if they make TV dinner style trays out of pyrex glass with a plastic cover. I would rather use something reusable instead of generating all that waste. I like the idea of the trays though, perfect for bringing a meal at work. That's one thing I really need to start doing more. I'm just not equipped for it (knowledge and equipment wise) so I need to get on that.

For spaghetti sauce and juicing I actually use mason jars, what's nice is they are dishwasher and microwave safe. You CAN freeze juice in them too as long as you leave some space for expansion, it will expand up and not sideways so they wont break.

Also bought this TV dinner the other day, it's suposedly healthy, it was steamed vegetables in a sauce, was actually really good. I don't imagine it would be that hard to make that myself... I need to buy a steamer.

 

[Kaido]

Wow thanks for all the cool info!

Now that has got me thinking wonder if they make TV dinner style trays out of pyrex glass with a plastic cover. I would rather use something reusable instead of generating all that waste. I like the idea of the trays though, perfect for bringing a meal at work. That's one thing I really need to start doing more. I'm just not equipped for it (knowledge and equipment wise) so I need to get on that.

For spaghetti sauce and juicing I actually use mason jars, what's nice is they are dishwasher and microwave safe. You CAN freeze juice in them too as long as you leave some space for expansion, it will expand up and not sideways so they wont break.

Also bought this TV dinner the other day, it's suposedly healthy, it was steamed vegetables in a sauce, was actually really good. I don't imagine it would be that hard to make that myself... I need to buy a steamer.

Ideally I would only use reusable containers, but there are 3 factors for me:

1. Cost
2. Space
3. Tossability

The first is that a 150-pack of containers is like $60, which makes them under half a buck each. Glass & permanent plastic stuff are easily ten times the cost, so if you want to do bulk make-ahead meals and stock a deep freezer with 40 or 50 containers, that's several hundred dollars worth of containers.

Which is fine because eventually the cost of the disposables will caught up with the permanents, but you also have to factor in the space issue: glass & thick plastic tends to take up more space than thin, Chinese takeout-style trays. I can fit a whole lot more containers in my freezer with the throwaway ones than I can with my Tupperware or Pyrex stuff, plus I have more room in my lunchbox this way.

The third is tossability. I like having the option to throw them away, especially since both my job & my school having recycling trash cans. I'll sometimes bring my lunch in a plastic grocery bag, with plastic utensils, in a plastic container, so the whole thing can get recycled when I'm done (and I don't have to do the dishes, yippie!). So there's a big convenience factor if you're usually in places where you can't easily rinse out your dishes, or don't want to do them when you get home.

There are a lot of neat technologies out there. There's the stoneware TV dinner trays linked earlier. Glad now has freezer-to-oven reusable containers as well:

http://www.amazon.com/Glad-Storage-C.../dp/B000EG7DGY

And of course the ones off the Web Restaurant store:

http://www.webstaurantstore.com/gen...-8-1-2-x-5-7-8-x-1-1-2-250-case/37455337.html

My main office recently got a toaster oven (yay) so that's a viable option for me now. Barring that, Rubbermaid also has some nice reusable containers that do pretty much everything except the oven:

http://www.amazon.com/Rubbermaid-Tak...dp/B0014CT9HI/

I have an electric steamer & it's pretty great. It depends on what you want to do, however. For example, I buy huge bags of frozen veggies from Sam's Club, and I've found the easiest way to heat up small serving sizes is to get a microwave-safe bowl, pour say frozen broccoli in it, and put water on top so it's more or less covered (I use cereal bowls), then microwave it for 3 to 3.5 minutes. The steamer can sometimes make it too mushy, and sometimes I only want to do a smaller amount for a single tray or two or three trays. So while it's still a good option, especially for steaming in bulk or for your family for dinner, the microwave trick is actually what I use the most!

As far as mason jars go, I'm a big fan. I use wide-mouth ones, usually with the plastic-screw on lids & some labels. Here's a pic I posted over in the smoothie thread:

http://i.imgur.com/0aMVGIj.jpg

I also have the Foodsaver vacuum-seal attachment for storing stuff airtight. Later this year, I'd like to pick up a pressure canner, particularly for canning meats. All in good time though

 

[Kaido]

I'm also working on revamping my 2015 Q1 meal plan (admittedly a little late to the game since it's already the 19th, haha). Here's what I've got so far:

http://catch42.pbworks.com/w/page/78929159/Meal Plan

I'm shooting for 2 primary goals this quarter:

1. 7 meals a day
2. 4-day minimum rotating diet

I haven't been as good as I should be about rotating the meals, and it's really, really easy to get sick of eating the same food all the time, so I'm trying to do at least a full 4-day meal plan (which is also what allergists recommend so you don't develop an allergy). Part of that too is tied into my goal of getting into food storage this year, which will help with storm prep (power outages from snowstorms & reduced access to roads) & cost reduction by buying in bulk.

I also want to try doing 7 "meals" a day. More than half of them are more just healthy snacks though. My schedule is pretty simple - in bed at 8pm, up at 4am, workout block is an hour, then time to eat:

Meal 1: (5:00am) Protein Smoothie
Meal 2: (7:00am) Breakfast
Meal 3: (10:00am) Energy Bites
Meal 4: (12:00pm) Lunch
Meal 5: (2:00pm) Treats
Meal 6: (5:00pm) Dinner
Meal 7: (6:00pm) Healthier Dessert

I've found I do a lot better on smaller meals; larger ones tend to make me sleepy & I like to eat, so it's win/win. This way, I can also carry a smaller lunchbox, since the two larger containers have breakfast & lunch, and then two smaller containers for the energy bites & treats. The treats are usually just something with some good fats (like coconut & peanut butter) to tide me over until dinner & give me a mid-afternoon pick-me-up that I can eat quickly. Plus, all of that stuff freezes well, so that's a plus. I'll have to try freezing my homemade avocado Jello pudding (it's amazing!), which apparently can be done since people do it with pies all the time.

So now that I have some good freezer tech (great TV dinner trays, a small dedicated chest freezer, etc.), I'm going to try to make the jump to 100% frozen meals. I'll still do fresh from time to time, but my goal is to have everything convenience-friendly. I've learned a lot over the last year+ since I started this thread, which has been really helpful in helping me meet my goals of healthy, tasty, easy food :thumbsup:

 

[Kaido]

Upped my kitchen organization game today with some hanging wire racks:

http://i.imgur.com/LuxybBy.jpg

It's ugly because everything is so visible, but the visibility makes everything accessible, which means I don't have to go dig out the appliance I want - I can just grab & use it, then wash it & easily put it away. Sounds like a very simple & obvious concept, but it's a huge lifestyle benefit for me due to having food allergies & needing to prep most of my food at home & will help out with my bulk cooking projects. So upside is that there's not a huge mess anymore, but the downside is that my kitchen now looks like a department store

 

[RossMAN]

Hi my name is Dave and I have a kitchen gadget problem.

 

[Kaido]

Hi my name is Dave and I have a kitchen gadget problem.

If we're having an intervention, how many do I need to cook for? :awe:

 

[Kaido]

Also, I've started my dried food storage project this year. First up was eggs for baking. Went with whole egg powder:

http://shop.honeyville.com/powdered-whole-eggs.html

$24.28 for a 2.25-pound #10 can, which makes 78 eggs. Just under 32 cents per egg with a 3-year shelf life (unopened). Fresh eggs are much cheaper (less than 17 cents each), but are not as convenient because you have to buy them fresh & store them. Since I do grain-free (which includes gluten-free) baking, I tend to go through a lot of eggs. For example, a dozen coconut-flour cupcakes uses a 8 eggs. Arrowroot flour tortillas use 2 eggs per single large 12" tortilla. Tapioca flour waffles also use 2 eggs each (for thick Belgian waffles). These are nice for backup in case I run out of fresh ones.

For baking, they turn out exactly the same as fresh eggs - just add water (2T mix, 3T water per egg). You don't have to pre-mix either, so if you want to make a DIY pre-mix package of waffle flour or whatever, you can do that, which is convenient. For eating, you'll want to go another route since they don't reconstitute very well according to friends & reviewers (I'm not going to waste my egg powder trying it). If you want to make omelets, frittatas, or scrambled eggs, you'll need whole egg crystals, which are significantly more expensive: (just under 50 cents per egg)

http://shop.honeyville.com/ova-easy-whole-egg-crystals.html

I found another good source of whole egg powder that I'll try when I run out of the first tub:

http://www.amazon.com/Hoosier-Hill-F...dp/B008T9SHRW/

As far as protein powders go, I'll have to do a little research to see if egg white powder for baking is the same as egg white protein powder, might be a good cost saver if so.

 

[Sixguns]

My only problem with meal prepping like this is getting sick of the same thing over and over. Its the one thing standing in my way of being leaner but I just cant seem to kick old eating habits.

 

[Kaido]

My only problem with meal prepping like this is getting sick of the same thing over and over. Its the one thing standing in my way of being leaner but I just cant seem to kick old eating habits.

110% agree. Even with different sauce flavors, chicken does get old after awhile. I've semi-mitigated that issue by having 3 freezers: (lol)

1. Small one on my fridge (bags of frozen veggies etc.)
2. Vertical deep freezer (basement - bulk frozen storage)
3. Small chest freezer (under the microwave - holds my homemade TV dinners)

That way over time I can build up a pretty decent variety. But still, there's a mental roadblock where you can look at a ton of different available food items you've made, and still just want "something else" (#firstworldproblems to the max haha). I think if I had like 20 different excellent-tasting meals available, that might work because there would be a huge variety of options, and I'm basically talking about "gourmet" options where it's not just "chicken + veggie" but an actual meal that tastes really good & would be enticing to eat regardless. But that involves a TON of prep. I am definitely not consistent at it yet

 

[Kaido]

Had a friend recommend the Reditainer brand of plastic storage containers:

http://reditainer.com/

Most of their products are the plastic tubs like you get from the deli or Chinese food take-out, but they freeze well too. They are available on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_sr_kitchen?ie=UTF8&field-brandtextbin=Reditainer&node=284507

I'm still working on upping my soup game & recently learned about the French's "Mirepoix" soup base:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirepoix_(cuisine)

Or the southern-style "Holy Trinity" soup foundation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_trinity_(cuisine)

Was never a big soup fan until a local healthfood restaurant started selling thick soups & bisques, which were amazing - it was an actual meal, unlike the canned chicken soup & stuff I had grown up on, which I only liked when I had a cold or the flu.

 

[Kaido]

Oh snap!

http://imgur.com/gallery/CNjbh

 

[surfsatwerk]

Show off

 

[Kaido]

Show off

Not mine! I did discover that there is a whole world of food prep online tho. Reddit has a big section:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MealPrepSunday/

Also, /r/fitmeals has some good meal ideas:

https://www.reddit.com/r/fitmeals

There's a neat meal planner here for Once A Month Cooking:

https://onceamonthmeals.com/

The difficult thing with make-ahead meals is putting enough effort into it to create a variety. You'll get real sick of eating the same thing over & over again, whether it's a TV dinner or a frozen burrito or whatever.

 

[soccerballtux]

thanks, this is awesome resource

off topic: I grilled for my friend last week and his mother simply could not get around the fact that I don't have a recipe for my perfect new york strip steaks-- the point is to understand how to the tool works, so that you can use the knowledge of the tool, and not be limited to the tool itself.

 

[soccerballtux]

Oh snap!

http://imgur.com/gallery/CNjbh

awesome.

Do you have commentary on health of all those carbs.
I would like to avoid them. I don't eat much, so what I eat, must count.

 

[soccerballtux]

My only problem with meal prepping like this is getting sick of the same thing over and over. Its the one thing standing in my way of being leaner but I just cant seem to kick old eating habits.

I'm in a similar stage. I hate learning new things.

start with one or two recipes. Come back to them in a month or two after you've forgotten what they taste like. Keep doing that until you understand why the recipe is the recipe.

Then, change to two new recipes. Keep doing them till you understand what the ingredients are doing.

Keep doing this, and within a few years you'll have both a repertoir and understanding of the food going into each recipe. Keep adding new recipes and you'll get to a point where you've always got something new

 

[gw186]

As someone who has been obese for a long time with a high of 315 but more recently hovering around 270, I found this thread and Kaido's passion for food very intriguing. I am very lazy when it comes to cooking so once a week sounded great. I ordered some freezer containers and they went unused for 2 months. Then i decided to just do it..

I stated June 15th and am down to 240 (12+ year low) through counting calories. I honestly don't know if I would have been successful with out precooking diners. So far i have made chicken and rice, fried rice with chicken, turkey chili, turkey meatloaf and rice, each with some frozen broccoli. Going great and haven't gotten tired of anything yet. I love the convenience...

Thank You Kaido!!!

 

[Kaido]

thanks, this is awesome resource

off topic: I grilled for my friend last week and his mother simply could not get around the fact that I don't have a recipe for my perfect new york strip steaks-- the point is to understand how to the tool works, so that you can use the knowledge of the tool, and not be limited to the tool itself.

Yeah, it's kind of a baking vs. cooking thing. I think a lot of people are successful with baking because it's something where you have to follow the step-by-step directions in order to get the results...for example, if you double the amount of salt in a cookie, you can easily ruin the whole batch. But with cooking, it's more about guidelines than hard & fast rules, which is why I think a lot of people struggle with it.

If you ever want to get into speed-cooking, check out the Wok Star system by Eleanor Ho. She sells a kit that has a thin cast-iron wok, a high-heat portable gas burner, and a DVD video recording of one of her cooking classes that shows exactly that - the workflow for doing fast wok-cooking. There's no recipes, just kind of some rules about the flow of cooking that let you make stuff based on what you're in the mood for & what you have available:

http://eleanorhoh.com/

 

[Kaido]

awesome.

Do you have commentary on health of all those carbs.
I would like to avoid them. I don't eat much, so what I eat, must count.

Not my picture, but I think they have some nutritional data below the photo. As far as carbs go, it depends on your specific situation & goals. For me, I do really poorly on a low-carb diet, so I love my carbs. I'm not necessarily on a high-carb diet, but I'm definitely not keto or anything. If you are trying to avoid carbs, check out Keto: (a good option if you want to control your blood sugar)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gZfJejOM8fJsX1iCilmnpp1qmT_KncJwWCR4-EsaEHc/edit?pli=1

 

[Kaido]

I'm in a similar stage. I hate learning new things.

start with one or two recipes. Come back to them in a month or two after you've forgotten what they taste like. Keep doing that until you understand why the recipe is the recipe.

Then, change to two new recipes. Keep doing them till you understand what the ingredients are doing.

Keep doing this, and within a few years you'll have both a repertoir and understanding of the food going into each recipe. Keep adding new recipes and you'll get to a point where you've always got something new

I'm a big fan of using one base recipe with a lot of variations, such as freezer burritos. It's really easy just to make like a ton of chicken burritos & enjoy them for a week or two, but then you get so sick of them that you'll yak just thinking about eating them again after that. Or just for packing nutrition in, I have a 10-ingredient smoothie system that you can vary the flavors on super easily so you're never drinking the same flavor mix in the same week:

http://catch42.pbworks.com/w/page/78032378/Protein Smoothies

imo creating enough stock of different-flavored food is the most difficult thing in bulk-food cooking. It's easy to cook bulk, and it's easy to find recipes to do so, but actually cooking so that you have enough variety is really hard to do. I'm definitely not perfect at it! Ideally, I'd like to get an extra deep-freezer at some point & do like a full month's worth of food with a full variety using my TV dinner trays, because then you could pull stuff out & have something different & random without getting sick of it. There's nothing worse when you're hungry and you take something out and you're like "ah man, not this again!"

 

[Kaido]

As someone who has been obese for a long time with a high of 315 but more recently hovering around 270, I found this thread and Kaido's passion for food very intriguing. I am very lazy when it comes to cooking so once a week sounded great. I ordered some freezer containers and they went unused for 2 months. Then i decided to just do it..

I stated June 15th and am down to 240 (12+ year low) through counting calories. I honestly don't know if I would have been successful with out precooking diners. So far i have made chicken and rice, fried rice with chicken, turkey chili, turkey meatloaf and rice, each with some frozen broccoli. Going great and haven't gotten tired of anything yet. I love the convenience...

Thank You Kaido!!!

You're welcome, good work, and keep it up!

I will tell you my experience: food is a million times more powerful in cutting fat than exercise is. Personally exercise is a chore for me (unless I'm just going out for a fun bike ride or something) & is not something that I enjoy naturally (I am definitely not an outdoor cat either), so changing what I eat is far easier than motivating myself to workout heavily every day. The nice thing is, I've found that food has a much more direct impact on losing weight than all of the exercise I ever did. I think at my peak, I lost about 60 pounds, mostly from switching to a healthy diet.

The biggest thing I learned was that you can make healthy food taste good (yay spices!). That was not an idea that I had cemented in my mind before. I mostly ate packaged foods, processed foods, or ate out, and had a high-sugar diet for sure. I am still a junk food addict, but I tend to make healthier versions (like energy bites). I've had friends who have lost a ton of weight eating nothing but stuff like plain chicken, rice, and veggies, which wasn't really appealing to me at all because I love food, so learning that cooking wasn't too hard & that you can make healthy food taste good was an eye-opening experience for me.

Also, I kind of hate eating specific diets & tracking calories & stuff. I like the idea of IIFYM quite a bit, but I've found I get excellent results just eating healthier versions of stuff (simply clean-eating without having to track anything), because it tends to fill you up a lot more. I can kill a whole box of cereal for breakfast, but I can only eat about one large chicken breast, and I can make that chicken breast taste awesome in my cast-iron pan with some lemon & seasonings on it. The big thing for me was building up enough skills that I could cook the bulk of my meals myself & have them actually taste good. I know some "bros" can pound through chicken & tuna all day long, but I just can't handle that level of repetitiveness & blandness on a regular basis haha.

So anyway, yeah - in my mind, food = weight-loss, exercise = pumps muscles up. Two different things for me. That, and healthy food can equal tasty food. The biggest incentive for me to eat healthy is by having tasty food available at all times, which is why bulk cooking & make-ahead meals works so well for me...I'm on the lazy side, and if it boils down to having to go out to get take-out vs. just microwaving a meal, and that meal will taste good, I'm not leaving the house lol. So it's kind of taking advantage of the path of least resistance...I don't do it because I'm a strong-willed person, but because of the opposite - if I make it more convenient to eat healthy & can make it fun by making the meals taste good, then I'm way more prone to being successful because then all I have to do is warm up the food & eat it, no cooking required that day :thumbsup:

 

[Kaido]

That reminds me, one of these days I need to write up a guide on Energy Bites. I've been discovering that you can actually get really awesome flavors & they work great as emergency treat snacks when you need a sugar hit. Some good ideas at the top of this list here:

http://catch42.pbworks.com/w/page/84297007/Energy Bites

My latest flavor is Kit-Kat balls, which uses a combination of dark chocolate & crushed Rice Krispies (I use the brown-rice krispies haha) along with the usual natural PB, coconut oil, etc. Also pictured is what happens when you don't do your meal prep & have to make a piece of chicken (again) with frozen veggies lol: